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Title: the end of the world (as we know it)
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 51,562
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, illness, involuntary vampirism.
Summary: When the vampire virus starts to develop a resistance to the Nightstalkers' Daystar weapon, Abigail is left watching helplessly as King has to fight not just for his life, but for his soul and his sanity.
Masterlist: AO3 :: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Previous Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
King had been right about throwing up. He should know, of course, given that he'd been through this once already, but it didn't make it any easier to listen to him.
Abby had no idea whether or not this was normal. She barely remembered the first time. She hadn't needed to pay attention back then, not when King had been nothing more to her than just another soon-to-be-dead vamp. The only reason she hadn't killed him on sight was because Sommerfield needed a test subject, and the way she'd seen it, King was as good an option as any other. He'd even wanted to die, goading her - unsuccessfully - into killing him. As soon as she'd got him back to base, he'd stopped being her problem, at least until he'd come out the other side of Sommerfield's cure and Sommerfield had no fucking idea what to do with him.
Strange what a difference three years could make. Or the three months it had been since they'd taken down the Talos Clan.
Or the three days of antivirus treatment King had already undergone - and even Abby, with her limited knowledge, could see it wasn't working as well as it had the first time around.
If she wasn't such a fucking coward, she'd tackle Caulder about it, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. As long as she wasn't asking questions, she could hold onto the hope: she was just being pessimistic; her memory was faulty and it had taken this long before; she was out of her depth, but Caulder knew what he was doing. Only, she'd never really been one for denial. The possibilities preyed on her, no matter how upbeat she tried to stay for King and Zoë's sake.
She didn't get much sleep. She couldn't sleep - when she closed her eyes, it wasn't Sommerfield's body she saw, or Hedges or Dex. It wasn't even Carruthers or Henderson's - it might make her the kind of bitch Carruthers had accused her of being, but she barely thought about them. It was King's face she saw when she dreamed, the look on it as he fought to escape and failed. The look on it as he'd come close to dying, blood running down his neck and a vampire virus starting to eat its way through his veins.
Yeah, after waking up from one of those nightmares there was no going back to sleep. Not for her.
She spent every waking hour haunting the infirmary or, when Caulder finally chased her out, with Zoë, trying to make up for King's absence in the little girl's life. Trying to make up for a lot of things, if she was being honest, and if she was honest then she also had to admit that she was failing. King was a surprisingly big hole to fill, and she'd never had a chance in hell of filling the hole that Sommerfield had left. This whole parenting gig was a complete mystery to her - how the hell was she supposed to deal with an orphaned six-year-old's fears of abandonment when she didn't even know how to deal with her own fears? She was reduced to mouthing platitudes and trying not to outright lie, meeting Zoë's wide and worried eyes with what she hoped was a reassuring smile and telling her that, yes, of course King was getting better. That he'd be up and about any day now.
Any day now.
But he wasn't, and the fear just kept gnawing away inside her as she watched him toss and turn restlessly, the fever raging inside his body. Hour after hour passed as she sat by his bedside, giving him the same reassuring smile she'd put together for Zoë when he was awake and trying, unsuccessfully, to hold the fear at bay when he wasn't.
He wasn't looking good, the sickness taking its toll. He couldn't keep human food down and he was so dehydrated now that Caulder had finally resorted to a saline drip. Maybe it was her imagination, but he seemed to be growing thinner day by day. His cheeks were hollow and there were dark circles underneath his eyes, which only served to accentuate the pallor of his skin. But not all of his paleness could be put down to the fact that Sommerfield's cure was doing a number on him, leaving him sick and shaking.
He still had fangs. That was the most visible sign that the vampirism virus still had him in its grasp, but it wasn't the only one and it was rapidly reaching the point where not even Abby could wilfully ignore it any longer.
It hurt to see him like this. She felt so fucking useless. He couldn't even escape from his situation while he slept, which meant that she couldn't, either. He twitched and shivered as he dreamed, and she knew enough to know that none of his dreams were good.
Tonight was no exception. King was dreaming again, his fingers curling against the crisp white hospital sheets as his brow furrowed and his eyes darting to and fro beneath his closed lids. He was panting in his sleep, his lips parted as he struggled to breathe, and his fangs flashed with each harsh, inward-drawn breath.
The sight repulsed and fascinated her in equal measure, but she pushed it down, unable to resist touching him even as sick, as vampiric as he still was. Even if she was reduced to smoothing the sweat-dampened hair back from his brow repetitively, trying to be comforting when she'd never been any good at that, it was better than nothing. It gave her something to do, something other than sitting there helplessly.
King muttered something, low in his throat, as she slid her fingers through his hair, easing apart the knotted strands. He felt so fragile, his skin paper thin and the curves of his skull clear under his scalp. Before now she would never have believed that she'd think of King as fragile. Not King, who was solid and real, a survivor in every sense of the word. His skin was burning hot - she thought it a bad sign, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe it meant that his body was fighting off the infection, that the fever was building before it broke. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep hold of her optimism.
Not when Caulder's expression was so grim.
Her fingers moved lower, tracing the line of his sideburn tenderly. It wasn't the kind of touch she should allow herself, but it was difficult to resist brushing her thumb gently over his cheekbone, feeling him settle at the touch. She lost herself in it, letting reality fade for a moment as she gathered hope around her, burying herself in denial, and maybe that was why it took a second for her to realise that his eyes were half-open.
He was watching her.
Her heart skipped a guilty beat, as though she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. She had, but when she started to pull back, his hand shot out, grabbing hold of her wrist.
He wasn't gentle about it, gripping it so hard that she'd have bruises. She frowned, already opening her mouth to protest when she realised what was wrong with this picture.
There was no recognition in his gaze. None.
Some instinct told her to freeze, or maybe that was simply shock. Whatever the reason, she didn't struggle when he tried to bring her hand closer. Instead, she locked all of her muscles down tight, concentrating on becoming an immovable object, something he couldn't shift even if he wanted to, fighting back the panic as his eyes flared golden-yellow.
King's lips parted, his teeth suddenly white and gleaming in the darkness of his mouth, and she clenched her fist, ready to let it fly, ready to punch him in the face if that was what it took to get him to let go of her.
But before she could, his eyes cleared, recognition finally dawning, and he stared blankly at her for a second before he finally let go, releasing his grip so suddenly that she rocked back in her seat.
Her wrist ached and her heart was pounding, a fast and furious beat as she stared down at him, still reeling. He stared back for a long moment, the expression on his face settling into something impassive and unreadable, when normally King was the world's worst liar, everything - everything - he felt showing on his face.
Nothing was showing now.
King was the first one to look away, shame finally blossoming on his face. It was followed swiftly by anger and fear, a flurry of emotions she couldn't track, even knowing King as well as she did.
Or as well as she thought she did.
She rubbed at her wrist, only stopping when she spotted the pain flashing through his eyes. She let her fingers drop awkwardly down into her lap where they curled helplessly as she struggled to find something to say. But it was King who broke the silence first, giving voice to what was probably his greatest fear.
"You okay?"
Did I hurt you, he meant, and Abby nodded her head mutely, not taking her eyes off him. "I'm fine," she said finally when non-verbal communication didn't seem provide enough reassurance, but from the twist of King's face, she still wasn't sure that he believed her.
"I... I was dreaming of Danica," he explained, but it wasn't rocket science to figure out that that wasn't the whole truth, or to know that both of them were well aware of his evasiveness. "I..." He wiped his hand over his face, dragging the skin down even more.
"I shouldn't have -" she started to say, breaking off when she realised she had no idea how to end that sentence, but maybe King knew her too well, too.
"You probably don't want to be around me when I'm asleep," he said, refusing to look at her. Instead he talked to the ceiling, like that was going to do any good. "I'm not always... I don't always know where I am when I wake up."
That would have been the smart thing to do, but it felt too close to abandoning him for Abby's peace of mind. She struggled again to find the words to say, but again the right words escaped her. She was left staring at him in silence, any argument she might have had melted away by the bruises around her wrist and the racing of her heart.
"Everything okay here?"
She should be glad to hear Sullivan's voice, even if part of her resented his presence, but the relief she felt seemed like a betrayal. But she couldn't deny that his arrival broke whatever tension still lingered in the room, nor could she pass up the opportunity to back away from King slowly, only turning to look at Sullivan when there was a safe distance between them.
King watched her go, his face expressionless.
Sullivan hadn't missed that something was amiss. His eyes darted between her and King, measuring and assessing the way they always did, but she couldn't tell what Sullivan was thinking. Unlike King, she'd never been able to read him. Sullivan played his cards even closer to his chest than the rest of them did.
"Nightmare," King said eventually, but only after the silence had stretched out to something uncomfortable. King's voice was gravelly, hoarse and ill-used. When she looked at him now, that blankness had disappeared from his face, leaving exhaustion behind.
He looked the most normal he had for days, and for a second she started to doubt herself, wondering if she'd misread the situation.
Sullivan was nodding thoughtfully when she looked back at him. He was looking straight at King, but something in his eyes told her that he wasn't entirely buying what King was selling. Or maybe she was projecting that as well, reading things into Sullivan's expression that just weren't there. When Sullivan switched his gaze to Abby, the look on his face didn't change.
"Got a minute?" he asked, jerking his head towards the infirmary door, making it clear that whatever he wanted to say to her, he wanted to say it in private.
She nodded mutely, rising and following him out with one last, backward look at King.
"What the hell was that?" he asked her as soon as they were out of earshot. He'd messed up - he'd given her time to regroup, and instead of the honesty he was probably anticipating, she treated him to a long, steady look, one that gave him no ground.
"Nightmare," she said succinctly, ignoring the way that his eyes narrowed or the searching look he gave her. She didn't know if he'd let it drop. She didn't really care, but Sullivan was smart and he tended to pick his fights with care, which might be why he was still alive and Henderson and Carruthers weren't. He must have decided not to pick this one, because he backed off, at least for the moment. She wasn't stupid enough to think that he'd let it go entirely.
"Caulder wants to talk to you," he said instead, and this couldn't be good. Not if it was something Caulder couldn't say in front of King.
-o-
-o-
"It's not working, is it?"
Whistler went straight on the attack. It wasn't the way that Sullivan himself would have tackled it, but it didn't seem like she'd listen to reason and so he did the smart thing, keeping his mouth shut. Caulder was a big boy. He could take care of himself, even faced with a woman who was close to vibrating with stress.
Caulder's expression was edging into hangdog, even more morose than it usually was, but he seemed to be taking Whistler's question seriously. Really seriously. Maybe that was something they taught you in medical school - how to break bad news with an appropriately solemn expression.
"It's... not proving to be as effective as it has previously," Caulder hedged, and Sullivan could have told him that he was wasting his breath. Whistler wasn't in the mood for prevarication, that much was clear. She needed simple yes or no answers, preferably ones that gave a better outcome than Caulder's expression was suggesting.
"What the hell does that mean?" she demanded, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. "What? It's going to take longer for it to kick in?"
Caulder shot a look in Sullivan's direction, which he wasn't entirely happy with. As far as he was concerned, there was no point in dragging him into the line of fire. He wasn't a doctor. What the hell did he know about it? But maybe Caulder just needed to know he had backup in the event that Whistler went ape shit, because he turned straight back to Whistler, his hands spread placatingly as he explained, "Sommerfield's antivirus is reducing the viral load -"
Right about then was where Caulder lost him, but Whistler seemed quicker on the uptake. "But not enough?" she asked forcefully, worrying at Caulder like a goddamned Doberman.
Caulder hesitated again, his mouth twisting unhappily. Thankfully he didn't look to Sullivan for moral support this time, which was better for Sullivan's blood pressure, but he seemed to have decided that there was no point in beating around Whistler's proverbial bush and he should just cut to the chase.
It was about time as far as Sullivan was concerned.
"I am more concerned about the effects that the vampirism virus itself is having on his system. It's destroying the haemoglobin in his blood cells, which is not unexpected. As you know, that is the driving force behind vampires' hunger for the blood of others." Caulder's cutting to the chase seemed vastly different to Sullivan's own interpretation of the phrase, and he shifted impatiently, hoping that Caulder got the message and sped things up a little.
Whistler, however, seem to be hanging on Caulder's every word, maybe because she was hoping for something different in there from what she must already be expecting. Sure, she was smart enough to follow Caulder's technobabble, but that didn't mean she was smart in any way that counted when it came to King.
"So what do we do?" she asked. She seemed calmer now, but Sullivan wasn't fooled. The tension was still clear in the set of her shoulders and stress reverberated in her voice, even if she'd lowered the volume. And the look in her eyes... He'd seen that look before, more than once.
She was expecting Caulder to rip her world apart. Expecting it, but still clinging desperately to the hope that she was wrong.
"For now," Caulder said, "we will have to administer whole blood to replace his own. I have tried giving it to him as sustenance -" It took a second for Sullivan to get what Caulder meant - that he'd tried feeding it to King - and from the way that Whistler's face paled suddenly, she got his meaning at the same time. Got the meaning but hadn't known about it happening, from what Sullivan could tell. "But he cannot keep it down. He is stuck between two states - no longer entirely a vampire, but not yet completely human. His system cannot absorb and use the haemoglobin in the way that a vampire would. It breaks it down to digest it the way that a human's does, when he can keep it down that is."
Whistler seemed stunned into silence, not that she was particularly forthcoming even under the best circumstances. Her eyes were unfocused as she assimilated what Caulder was telling her, but she didn't seem to be coming back from it in any hurry. It was left to Sullivan to fill the gap, and he was really fucking uncomfortable about it.
"So what are you proposing?"
Whistler's eyes darted between the pair of them, but she was still keeping silent. But hell, as long as she didn't shoot the messenger...
Caulder took a deep breath, holding it in for a second as he considered his response.
The answer, when it came, was pretty much as Sullivan had expected and obviously better than Whistler had feared.
"I have already set King up on a saline drip," Caulder said slowly. "At this point, I believe that regular transfusion is the only way we can maintain his haemoglobin levels. Hopefully, this will also reduce his thirst to a more manageable level."
Whistler let out a soft sigh and some of the ever-present tension in her shoulders eased away. Maybe part of her had actually believed that Caulder was going to suggest something more terminal. He guessed that compared to that, a couple of bags of blood a day didn't even rate on her concern-o-meter. Sullivan, however, wasn't quite as optimistic about the whole thing as she seemed to be. For a start, he didn't trust King to be able to control his thirst, blood transfusion or no blood transfusion. Blade was the exception, not the rule, and King was no Blade. Couldn't even come fucking close.
And that was before he even considered all of the other issues, issues that didn't seem to have occurred to Whistler.
"How long?" he asked. Whistler turned her head and gave him a confused look, like she'd missed the memo or, more likely, several of them. "What kind of resource commitment are we looking at here?"
Whistler was still looking at him, which meant he could pinpoint the exact point where her mood changed from confused to absolutely fucking furious. Even as exhausted as she was, as weighed down with worry for King, Whistler's anger was an intimidating sight.
Or would have been if Sullivan wasn't used to bucking the chain of command when called for.
"Commitment?" she asked, her voice low and threatening. Her eyes had darkened in fury, the pupils wide and black as she shifted from concerned girlfriend to take-no-prisoners, ass-kicking Valkyrie. It was a fairly impressive sight, even if he was pretty sure he could take her. She'd had, what? Six or seven hours sleep in the last three days? If she'd been well rested, he wouldn't have liked his chances, but he couldn't let a death threat or two stop him. Even as punch-drunk as she was, as hard as it was going to hit, she needed another reality check and it didn't seem like Caulder was willing to give it to her.
Which meant it was up to him.
"Have you been listening to the chatter?" he asked brusquely, knowing there was no point in pulling his punches. "At least three cells have fallen off the grid since you and King ran into your little problem. Word is Daystar is only working seven out of ten these days, and the success rate is dropping day by day."
She didn't believe him or didn't want to believe him, which amounted to pretty much the same thing. She glanced at Caulder, either looking for some support from him or some confirmation that what Sullivan had said was true.
Sullivan didn't take it personally. Much.
She still wasn't convinced when she turned back, either that or she didn't care whether or not he was telling her the truth, because the first words out of her mouth were, "What does that have to do with King?"
Which only went to show how fucked up her priorities were. He leaned in, getting in her space in a way he probably wouldn't have done once, back when Henderson and Carruthers were still alive and Whistler wasn't losing the fucking plot. "We're losing people hand over fist, Whistler. I know it's hard. I don't want to lose King either." So maybe that was a lie. Like he gave two shits about King when it came down to it. "But we're fighting for our lives and for everyone else's lives. Sacrifices have to be made."
She didn't bother to hide her contempt and, yeah, that last part had sounded pretentious as hell. But what the hell did she expect? Their cell was down to three - he didn't count Caulder's wife, Marta, and he sure as hell wasn't going to count King. With Daystar failing, they were going to have to go back to old-fashioned ass-kicking, which meant there was going to be no one to babysit King even if he hadn't been a threat all on his own.
"Sacrifices?" The contempt was clear in her voice, too. "What the fuck do you know about sacrifice?"
He held her gaze steadily, finally letting some of his own anger leak into his voice. Some of it - the rest he kept locked down tight. "Vampires killed my wife, Whistler. Vampires like King." She flushed an ugly shade of red, but she didn't back down and he didn't let her off the hook. Not yet, and maybe not ever, raising his voice in the hope that that would finally get through to her. "Sooner or later, the thirst always wins. You know that, Whistler. You know that."
Her eyes dropped, long enough that he thought he'd finally got through to her. He should have known better. He should have remembered that when she was losing, when she was outmatched and outgunned, she fought dirty.
She fought to win.
"What if they hadn't killed her, Sullivan? What if they'd turned her instead? Would you still be arguing about 'resources' then?"
The anger flared within him, burning hot and bright. He no longer cared that he had half a foot on her, or that they were technically on the same side, or that she was perfectly capable of breaking every bone in his body if she had enough motivation. He loomed over her, his nostrils flaring and the look in his eyes hard and uncompromising.
"Don't you fucking dare compare King and my wife," he said quietly, the full weight of his fury showing in every clearly enunciated word. But he should have known better than to think she'd back down just because he was beyond pissed and unable to hide it.
"I'm not," she said and it would have been better if her voice had been full of the same kind of uncompromising iciness that his had been, instead of being resigned and exhausted. It would have been better if her next words hadn't been: "I'm comparing how you felt about her to how I feel about King."
The words took the wind out of his sails and left him feeling like a fucking heel, and she just kept twisting the knife, her voice rising with every word as her anger built back up again.
"So don't you dare tell me that it's a question of resources, that you've done the math and it just doesn't add up. If it wasn't for King, you wouldn't have made it this far." She took a step back, her look encompassing not only Sullivan, but Caulder as well. "None of the Nightstalkers would have made it this far because there wouldn't be a Nightstalkers and there wouldn't be a cure if it hadn't been for King volunteering to be a guinea pig the first time around."
She swung back to Sullivan, her body taut in a way that had him bracing himself for the next blow. "That's how much he wanted to be free of the virus. He'd rather have died than stayed with Danica. He wanted me to fucking shoot him, for Christ's sake. He didn't give up then and we're not giving up now. We don't leave our people behind, remember? Not if we can help it. Not if we can save them. It's too late for Carruthers and Henderson, and you weren't the one who had to sit there, helpless, while you watched them die.
"It's not too late for King, and I'll be damned if we give up on him."
She waited, staring him down until she was satisfied that she'd got through to him, or satisfied that he knew he wasn't going to get through to her. And then she turned to Caulder, dismissing Sullivan with a last hard and unforgiving glance as she said, "You do what you have to. If that means you have to give him a transfusion, you do that." She shot another pointed look at Sullivan. "No matter what the resource implications are."
Caulder nodded, avoiding Sullivan's eyes. Only then did Whistler turn on her heel, stalking back towards where King was sleeping.
"Well," said Caulder slowly. "That could have gone better."
Master of the fucking understatement. Sullivan let out the breath he was holding, feeling raw, like he'd gone ten rounds with Blade and come out, unsurprisingly, on the losing side.
"Do you really think you can cure him?" he asked. "Or are you just blowing smoke up Whistler's ass?"
Caulder didn't take offence at the crudity - he never did. Instead, he hummed to himself thoughtfully, his fingers scratching in his beard.
And then he shrugged. "If Daystar is failing, it's because the virus is mutating or because not all original strains are susceptible to it. Either way, King is infected with the resistant strain and this may be my best chance to determine why it is resistant."
"So he's your guinea pig this time as well?" Man, that was cold, even by Sullivan's own standards. He'd never figured Caulder for the mad scientist type, although from what he'd heard about Somerfield, finding out the same about her wouldn't have surprised him.
Caulder shrugged again. "I prefer to think of him as my patient, and I will, of course, do the best I can for him. And if, in the process, I can engineer the removal of some vampires from this earth..."
Sullivan gave him a tight little smile, one that held no amusement. "You're a visionary, my friend."
Caulder pulled an 'eh' face. "I prefer to think of myself as an optimist."
Sullivan wasn't going to argue with that.
-o-
No matter what Sullivan may have thought, the fact that they were losing cells did bother Abby. What bothered her more was that she hadn't known about it, had taken her eye so far off the ball, had been so focused on King, that she'd missed it.
She commandeered one of the working laptops and pored over the few, fragmented reports that had reached what was left of their cell. There wasn't much to go on - Nightstalkers weren't much for sharing even when things were going well, too concerned that the vampires would get wise to their arrangements and track back from one cell to another. What you didn't know couldn't be tortured out of you.
But there were still ways and means of pooling information where they could, most of which Hedges had come up with. Locked forums and chat rooms, masked IPs and proxy servers. Things she didn't understand and seldom used - she'd left that to Hedges, but Hedges wasn't around to pick up the slack.
And Abby had definitely been slacking.
It made grim reading. Sullivan had been right - at least three cells had gone completely silent, and while Abby would like to think that they'd just gone to ground, erring on the side of caution, the pessimist in her knew better. They hadn't fallen off the grid - they'd been forcibly and violently removed, one cell at a time.
Carruthers and Henderson could attest to that.
But even the cells that hadn't gone silent didn't have good news. There were repeated, coded reports of the 'payload' failing to deliver, of 'excess asset depreciation' or 'loss of customer retention'.
All of which told Abby that Daystar wasn't working and people were dying because of it.
The only upside was the fact that the vampire herd seemed to have been thinned considerably by Daystar before Sommerfield's antivirus had finally burned itself out. The downside was that the remaining vampires seemed not only immune but pissed as hell and looking for payback.
She needed to start doing her job, spending less time by King's bedside or, if she sat with King, spending as much time trawling through intelligence as she did watching him sleep the sleep of the infected and restless. Her focus now had to be on doing what she was supposed to have been doing all along - hunting vamps. Even when Hedges had been around, with his state-of-the-art ability to intercept communications and follow the money, she'd always relied on the old-fashioned way of tracking - mapping clusters of unexpected deaths and police homicide reports, or keeping an eye on CDC chatter for any unexpected or unexplained disease spikes. Now it seemed as though they were going to have to rely on the old-fashioned way of killing vamps, as well.
It wasn't going to take as much of a readjustment to her worldview as Sullivan might have expected, given his apparently low opinion of her. Yeah, she may have relied on Daystar a little too much to make their jobs easier, but she wasn't the only one and she was still more than capable of kicking ass. One of these days he might find that out up close and personal.
She was adaptable - she'd had to be. All of them it had to be and she'd long since learned to roll with the punches.
The problem was that the punches just kept on coming.
-o-
King was sleeping again. He slept a lot and all Zoë wanted was for him to wake up. She was so bored, especially because Abby was so busy these days and didn't seem to have the time to spend with her, not since King got sick. And even when she did have the time, Abby always looked sad. Zoë didn't think it was just because Abby missed her mom.
Zoë missed her mom. She tried not to, she really did, because she wanted to be a good girl. Abby was kind and King was funny, and they'd promised to take care of her, but they weren't her mom. Nothing could replace her mom, especially not when Abby was too busy and Caulder was too big and scary to talk to.
That left King, and King was sick. He slept a lot and Zoë wasn't supposed to disturb him when he was sleeping. Or when he was awake. Abby said he got tired because he was sick, and that he'd be well again soon, but he didn't seem to be getting any better. Maybe that was why Abby looked sad all of the time, because she was worried about King. And that meant that Zoë worried about him, too.
She knew that she wasn't supposed to sneak into the infirmary, but she'd wanted to see King, have him tell her silly stories until she felt better. She also wanted to make sure that he hadn't changed his mind about helping Abby look after her, but when she made her way past Caulder, who was looking down the same kind of microscope that her mom had had and didn't see her, King was asleep again and Abby wasn't there.
She sighed, kicking her feet disconsolately as she settled into the chair by King's bed and pulled Mr Gigglesworth into her lap. King had come up with the name for her new stuffed bunny, bought to replace all of the toys that she'd had to leave behind in the Honeycomb Hideout. She wasn't sure that it suited him, but King's eyes had crinkled up at the corners when he said it and she'd liked the way that it had sounded in King's mouth - like he was laughing a little as he said it and that made her want to laugh a little as well - so Mr Gigglesworth it was.
He didn't talk much, though. Not like King talked and whenever Sullivan caught her talking to the toy, he'd watch her with a small frown like she was just a baby and no use for anything. When he looked at her like that, all of her words dried up and she wanted to cry, just like the baby she really wasn't, no matter what Sullivan thought.
She guessed that Sullivan was okay, really, but she wasn't sure she liked him, not like she liked King. She didn't know him well enough and King didn't talk about her as if she was a nuisance baby. She didn't even mind if he called her half-pint or runt. He called everyone stupid names, except for Abby. Or he had. Back before her mom had died.
Zoë sighed again, switching her attention from her bunny's empty plastic eyes to King.
King's eyes were open, watching her even if they looked kind of empty like her toy's, and she perked up, excited to have someone to talk to who wouldn't think she was a pest.
"Hey," he said, and his voice sounded croaky, like Zoë's did when she had a cold or her throat was sore. She smiled at him but King didn't smile back, not at first. He just blinked at her a little, like he was still mostly asleep.
His eyes were a little weird, not like they normally were. They were light, as if all of the colour had washed away from them. Just like the Nome King's eyes had been before Abby and King (and Blade) had killed him. Just like Blade's were all of the time.
"Is your throat sore?" she asked him sympathetically, wondering if that was why he sounded so rough. "Are you thirsty?"
His face twisted up, like he had to think about it. "A little," he said, and his eyes seemed really bright now. Zoë stared at them, fascinated, before remembering how her mom used to say that staring wasn't nice, although she never figured out how her mom knew when she was staring when her mom couldn't see her doing it. Her mom used to tell her it was magic, like the Wizard of Oz.
"I'll get you a glass of milk," she said, jumping up before King could tell her off for staring, too. She didn't think he would but better - as her mom had said - safe than sorry.
She was a big girl now, and she knew how to fetch the stool so that she could reach the plastic glasses, and how to open the refrigerator door so that it didn't hit her or swing closed before she could get the jug out of the rack in the door. She poured it carefully, not spilling a drop, and then put everything back in its place before heading to the infirmary and King, both hands wrapped around the glass and walking slowly so that it didn't spill.
When she handed it to him, he gulped it down greedily, little droplets of milk escaping to run down his chin and land on his t-shirt, where they left dark little splotches.
"You'll get a tummy ache if you drink it that fast," she warned him disapprovingly, and he huffed out a little laugh as he put the glass shakily down onto his bedside table, turning his head to look at her again.
She beamed back at him, happy that he was awake and company, before she remembered her manners. "Would you like some more?" she asked politely, and he laughed again, a little breathlessly, although she didn't know what she'd said that was funny.
"Yes, please, sweetheart," he said, and she smiled at him again, bouncing back into the kitchen because this time the glass was empty and she didn't have to worry about dripping milk everywhere - he'd drained it dry.
She left the stool where it was this time. King might want more and it was too heavy to keep moving about by herself. But she still didn't make a mess and she was just as careful carrying the full glass back, settling herself on the chair beside his bed to watch him as he gulped the cool milk down again. He seemed really thirsty. She would have asked him if he wanted some more but this time he kept hold of the glass when he'd finished, wiping the back of his hand shakily across his mouth.
She stared at him for a minute, looking away from his eyes to the needle in his arm. It made her feel a little bit dizzy, watching the blood drip down into the tube, like her head was a balloon and it was just going to float away, but she couldn't be squeamish if she was going to be a doctor like her mom.
"Does it hurt?" she asked politely, looking back at King because it was better than looking at the blood. He stared back at her blankly and she had to point to the drip and the big, red bag hanging above him.
He thought about it for a moment, watching the bag, and maybe the sight made him feel a little bit sick as well, because he was even paler when he turned back to face her.
"It itches a bit," he said. Zoë couldn't see why blood would itch but King would know better than she did.
He was being very brave, braver than Zoë thought she could be if someone stuck a needle in her arm.
"Are you going to stay awake now?" she asked when he stayed silent, and he smiled back at her, soft and faint.
"I guess so."
"Are you feeling better?"
He hesitated for a moment, before nodding. His eyes were still bright and not like King's at all, but she'd missed talking to him. "A little bit," he said. "Why, d'you want some company?"
She nodded enthusiastically, and his laugh this time was more like King's used to be.
"Want me to read you a story?"
That got an even more enthusiastic nod. King wasn't the one who usually read her stories - her mom had done that, and then Abby once her mom had died. But Zoë would never pass up a story about Oz, even if it was something that had just been between her mom and her once.
She guessed that Abby and King were her new family now, and it was bad not to share.
"Okay," he said, and he wasn't smiling now. He looked tired, his eyes too pale and his face all washed out. Maybe he was still feeling sick, and she felt a little guilty at bothering him when Abby had told her not to. But King didn't seem to mind, and maybe it was just that all of that milk really had given him a stomach ache. And anyway, he'd offered to read her a story, and she'd missed stories so much since Abby got so busy. "Go fetch your book and then you can come and sit right down here." He patted the bed beside him. "So we can both see the pictures, okay?"
She didn't pick an Oz book. Not when King's eyes were shining like that, reminding her too much the Nome King's eyes and how they had looked just the same. She picked Alice in Wonderland instead, because it was almost as good as an Oz book and it was just as silly as King.
Caulder didn't spot her when she made her way back to the infirmary this time either. Being small was good in some ways if it meant she could sneak into places without being seen. King was still awake and she gave him another smile, getting a tired, distracted one back, before she clambered up onto the bed next to him, settling herself in the crook of his arm.
He was very warm, even if the arm he put around her wasn't as soft as her mom's. She propped the book up on her knees and started turning the pages, listening as King started to read the words softly, stumbling over them like he was really tired and couldn't concentrate. She didn't mind that much - she knew the story well enough to fill in most of the gaps even when he got distracted, or he missed words or sentences.
It was still a good story and it was good to have someone read it to her.
-o-
Next Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 51,562
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, illness, involuntary vampirism.
Summary: When the vampire virus starts to develop a resistance to the Nightstalkers' Daystar weapon, Abigail is left watching helplessly as King has to fight not just for his life, but for his soul and his sanity.
Masterlist: AO3 :: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
Previous Part: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
King had been right about throwing up. He should know, of course, given that he'd been through this once already, but it didn't make it any easier to listen to him.
Abby had no idea whether or not this was normal. She barely remembered the first time. She hadn't needed to pay attention back then, not when King had been nothing more to her than just another soon-to-be-dead vamp. The only reason she hadn't killed him on sight was because Sommerfield needed a test subject, and the way she'd seen it, King was as good an option as any other. He'd even wanted to die, goading her - unsuccessfully - into killing him. As soon as she'd got him back to base, he'd stopped being her problem, at least until he'd come out the other side of Sommerfield's cure and Sommerfield had no fucking idea what to do with him.
Strange what a difference three years could make. Or the three months it had been since they'd taken down the Talos Clan.
Or the three days of antivirus treatment King had already undergone - and even Abby, with her limited knowledge, could see it wasn't working as well as it had the first time around.
If she wasn't such a fucking coward, she'd tackle Caulder about it, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. As long as she wasn't asking questions, she could hold onto the hope: she was just being pessimistic; her memory was faulty and it had taken this long before; she was out of her depth, but Caulder knew what he was doing. Only, she'd never really been one for denial. The possibilities preyed on her, no matter how upbeat she tried to stay for King and Zoë's sake.
She didn't get much sleep. She couldn't sleep - when she closed her eyes, it wasn't Sommerfield's body she saw, or Hedges or Dex. It wasn't even Carruthers or Henderson's - it might make her the kind of bitch Carruthers had accused her of being, but she barely thought about them. It was King's face she saw when she dreamed, the look on it as he fought to escape and failed. The look on it as he'd come close to dying, blood running down his neck and a vampire virus starting to eat its way through his veins.
Yeah, after waking up from one of those nightmares there was no going back to sleep. Not for her.
She spent every waking hour haunting the infirmary or, when Caulder finally chased her out, with Zoë, trying to make up for King's absence in the little girl's life. Trying to make up for a lot of things, if she was being honest, and if she was honest then she also had to admit that she was failing. King was a surprisingly big hole to fill, and she'd never had a chance in hell of filling the hole that Sommerfield had left. This whole parenting gig was a complete mystery to her - how the hell was she supposed to deal with an orphaned six-year-old's fears of abandonment when she didn't even know how to deal with her own fears? She was reduced to mouthing platitudes and trying not to outright lie, meeting Zoë's wide and worried eyes with what she hoped was a reassuring smile and telling her that, yes, of course King was getting better. That he'd be up and about any day now.
Any day now.
But he wasn't, and the fear just kept gnawing away inside her as she watched him toss and turn restlessly, the fever raging inside his body. Hour after hour passed as she sat by his bedside, giving him the same reassuring smile she'd put together for Zoë when he was awake and trying, unsuccessfully, to hold the fear at bay when he wasn't.
He wasn't looking good, the sickness taking its toll. He couldn't keep human food down and he was so dehydrated now that Caulder had finally resorted to a saline drip. Maybe it was her imagination, but he seemed to be growing thinner day by day. His cheeks were hollow and there were dark circles underneath his eyes, which only served to accentuate the pallor of his skin. But not all of his paleness could be put down to the fact that Sommerfield's cure was doing a number on him, leaving him sick and shaking.
He still had fangs. That was the most visible sign that the vampirism virus still had him in its grasp, but it wasn't the only one and it was rapidly reaching the point where not even Abby could wilfully ignore it any longer.
It hurt to see him like this. She felt so fucking useless. He couldn't even escape from his situation while he slept, which meant that she couldn't, either. He twitched and shivered as he dreamed, and she knew enough to know that none of his dreams were good.
Tonight was no exception. King was dreaming again, his fingers curling against the crisp white hospital sheets as his brow furrowed and his eyes darting to and fro beneath his closed lids. He was panting in his sleep, his lips parted as he struggled to breathe, and his fangs flashed with each harsh, inward-drawn breath.
The sight repulsed and fascinated her in equal measure, but she pushed it down, unable to resist touching him even as sick, as vampiric as he still was. Even if she was reduced to smoothing the sweat-dampened hair back from his brow repetitively, trying to be comforting when she'd never been any good at that, it was better than nothing. It gave her something to do, something other than sitting there helplessly.
King muttered something, low in his throat, as she slid her fingers through his hair, easing apart the knotted strands. He felt so fragile, his skin paper thin and the curves of his skull clear under his scalp. Before now she would never have believed that she'd think of King as fragile. Not King, who was solid and real, a survivor in every sense of the word. His skin was burning hot - she thought it a bad sign, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe it meant that his body was fighting off the infection, that the fever was building before it broke. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep hold of her optimism.
Not when Caulder's expression was so grim.
Her fingers moved lower, tracing the line of his sideburn tenderly. It wasn't the kind of touch she should allow herself, but it was difficult to resist brushing her thumb gently over his cheekbone, feeling him settle at the touch. She lost herself in it, letting reality fade for a moment as she gathered hope around her, burying herself in denial, and maybe that was why it took a second for her to realise that his eyes were half-open.
He was watching her.
Her heart skipped a guilty beat, as though she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. She had, but when she started to pull back, his hand shot out, grabbing hold of her wrist.
He wasn't gentle about it, gripping it so hard that she'd have bruises. She frowned, already opening her mouth to protest when she realised what was wrong with this picture.
There was no recognition in his gaze. None.
Some instinct told her to freeze, or maybe that was simply shock. Whatever the reason, she didn't struggle when he tried to bring her hand closer. Instead, she locked all of her muscles down tight, concentrating on becoming an immovable object, something he couldn't shift even if he wanted to, fighting back the panic as his eyes flared golden-yellow.
King's lips parted, his teeth suddenly white and gleaming in the darkness of his mouth, and she clenched her fist, ready to let it fly, ready to punch him in the face if that was what it took to get him to let go of her.
But before she could, his eyes cleared, recognition finally dawning, and he stared blankly at her for a second before he finally let go, releasing his grip so suddenly that she rocked back in her seat.
Her wrist ached and her heart was pounding, a fast and furious beat as she stared down at him, still reeling. He stared back for a long moment, the expression on his face settling into something impassive and unreadable, when normally King was the world's worst liar, everything - everything - he felt showing on his face.
Nothing was showing now.
King was the first one to look away, shame finally blossoming on his face. It was followed swiftly by anger and fear, a flurry of emotions she couldn't track, even knowing King as well as she did.
Or as well as she thought she did.
She rubbed at her wrist, only stopping when she spotted the pain flashing through his eyes. She let her fingers drop awkwardly down into her lap where they curled helplessly as she struggled to find something to say. But it was King who broke the silence first, giving voice to what was probably his greatest fear.
"You okay?"
Did I hurt you, he meant, and Abby nodded her head mutely, not taking her eyes off him. "I'm fine," she said finally when non-verbal communication didn't seem provide enough reassurance, but from the twist of King's face, she still wasn't sure that he believed her.
"I... I was dreaming of Danica," he explained, but it wasn't rocket science to figure out that that wasn't the whole truth, or to know that both of them were well aware of his evasiveness. "I..." He wiped his hand over his face, dragging the skin down even more.
"I shouldn't have -" she started to say, breaking off when she realised she had no idea how to end that sentence, but maybe King knew her too well, too.
"You probably don't want to be around me when I'm asleep," he said, refusing to look at her. Instead he talked to the ceiling, like that was going to do any good. "I'm not always... I don't always know where I am when I wake up."
That would have been the smart thing to do, but it felt too close to abandoning him for Abby's peace of mind. She struggled again to find the words to say, but again the right words escaped her. She was left staring at him in silence, any argument she might have had melted away by the bruises around her wrist and the racing of her heart.
"Everything okay here?"
She should be glad to hear Sullivan's voice, even if part of her resented his presence, but the relief she felt seemed like a betrayal. But she couldn't deny that his arrival broke whatever tension still lingered in the room, nor could she pass up the opportunity to back away from King slowly, only turning to look at Sullivan when there was a safe distance between them.
King watched her go, his face expressionless.
Sullivan hadn't missed that something was amiss. His eyes darted between her and King, measuring and assessing the way they always did, but she couldn't tell what Sullivan was thinking. Unlike King, she'd never been able to read him. Sullivan played his cards even closer to his chest than the rest of them did.
"Nightmare," King said eventually, but only after the silence had stretched out to something uncomfortable. King's voice was gravelly, hoarse and ill-used. When she looked at him now, that blankness had disappeared from his face, leaving exhaustion behind.
He looked the most normal he had for days, and for a second she started to doubt herself, wondering if she'd misread the situation.
Sullivan was nodding thoughtfully when she looked back at him. He was looking straight at King, but something in his eyes told her that he wasn't entirely buying what King was selling. Or maybe she was projecting that as well, reading things into Sullivan's expression that just weren't there. When Sullivan switched his gaze to Abby, the look on his face didn't change.
"Got a minute?" he asked, jerking his head towards the infirmary door, making it clear that whatever he wanted to say to her, he wanted to say it in private.
She nodded mutely, rising and following him out with one last, backward look at King.
"What the hell was that?" he asked her as soon as they were out of earshot. He'd messed up - he'd given her time to regroup, and instead of the honesty he was probably anticipating, she treated him to a long, steady look, one that gave him no ground.
"Nightmare," she said succinctly, ignoring the way that his eyes narrowed or the searching look he gave her. She didn't know if he'd let it drop. She didn't really care, but Sullivan was smart and he tended to pick his fights with care, which might be why he was still alive and Henderson and Carruthers weren't. He must have decided not to pick this one, because he backed off, at least for the moment. She wasn't stupid enough to think that he'd let it go entirely.
"Caulder wants to talk to you," he said instead, and this couldn't be good. Not if it was something Caulder couldn't say in front of King.
-o-
-o-
"It's not working, is it?"
Whistler went straight on the attack. It wasn't the way that Sullivan himself would have tackled it, but it didn't seem like she'd listen to reason and so he did the smart thing, keeping his mouth shut. Caulder was a big boy. He could take care of himself, even faced with a woman who was close to vibrating with stress.
Caulder's expression was edging into hangdog, even more morose than it usually was, but he seemed to be taking Whistler's question seriously. Really seriously. Maybe that was something they taught you in medical school - how to break bad news with an appropriately solemn expression.
"It's... not proving to be as effective as it has previously," Caulder hedged, and Sullivan could have told him that he was wasting his breath. Whistler wasn't in the mood for prevarication, that much was clear. She needed simple yes or no answers, preferably ones that gave a better outcome than Caulder's expression was suggesting.
"What the hell does that mean?" she demanded, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. "What? It's going to take longer for it to kick in?"
Caulder shot a look in Sullivan's direction, which he wasn't entirely happy with. As far as he was concerned, there was no point in dragging him into the line of fire. He wasn't a doctor. What the hell did he know about it? But maybe Caulder just needed to know he had backup in the event that Whistler went ape shit, because he turned straight back to Whistler, his hands spread placatingly as he explained, "Sommerfield's antivirus is reducing the viral load -"
Right about then was where Caulder lost him, but Whistler seemed quicker on the uptake. "But not enough?" she asked forcefully, worrying at Caulder like a goddamned Doberman.
Caulder hesitated again, his mouth twisting unhappily. Thankfully he didn't look to Sullivan for moral support this time, which was better for Sullivan's blood pressure, but he seemed to have decided that there was no point in beating around Whistler's proverbial bush and he should just cut to the chase.
It was about time as far as Sullivan was concerned.
"I am more concerned about the effects that the vampirism virus itself is having on his system. It's destroying the haemoglobin in his blood cells, which is not unexpected. As you know, that is the driving force behind vampires' hunger for the blood of others." Caulder's cutting to the chase seemed vastly different to Sullivan's own interpretation of the phrase, and he shifted impatiently, hoping that Caulder got the message and sped things up a little.
Whistler, however, seem to be hanging on Caulder's every word, maybe because she was hoping for something different in there from what she must already be expecting. Sure, she was smart enough to follow Caulder's technobabble, but that didn't mean she was smart in any way that counted when it came to King.
"So what do we do?" she asked. She seemed calmer now, but Sullivan wasn't fooled. The tension was still clear in the set of her shoulders and stress reverberated in her voice, even if she'd lowered the volume. And the look in her eyes... He'd seen that look before, more than once.
She was expecting Caulder to rip her world apart. Expecting it, but still clinging desperately to the hope that she was wrong.
"For now," Caulder said, "we will have to administer whole blood to replace his own. I have tried giving it to him as sustenance -" It took a second for Sullivan to get what Caulder meant - that he'd tried feeding it to King - and from the way that Whistler's face paled suddenly, she got his meaning at the same time. Got the meaning but hadn't known about it happening, from what Sullivan could tell. "But he cannot keep it down. He is stuck between two states - no longer entirely a vampire, but not yet completely human. His system cannot absorb and use the haemoglobin in the way that a vampire would. It breaks it down to digest it the way that a human's does, when he can keep it down that is."
Whistler seemed stunned into silence, not that she was particularly forthcoming even under the best circumstances. Her eyes were unfocused as she assimilated what Caulder was telling her, but she didn't seem to be coming back from it in any hurry. It was left to Sullivan to fill the gap, and he was really fucking uncomfortable about it.
"So what are you proposing?"
Whistler's eyes darted between the pair of them, but she was still keeping silent. But hell, as long as she didn't shoot the messenger...
Caulder took a deep breath, holding it in for a second as he considered his response.
The answer, when it came, was pretty much as Sullivan had expected and obviously better than Whistler had feared.
"I have already set King up on a saline drip," Caulder said slowly. "At this point, I believe that regular transfusion is the only way we can maintain his haemoglobin levels. Hopefully, this will also reduce his thirst to a more manageable level."
Whistler let out a soft sigh and some of the ever-present tension in her shoulders eased away. Maybe part of her had actually believed that Caulder was going to suggest something more terminal. He guessed that compared to that, a couple of bags of blood a day didn't even rate on her concern-o-meter. Sullivan, however, wasn't quite as optimistic about the whole thing as she seemed to be. For a start, he didn't trust King to be able to control his thirst, blood transfusion or no blood transfusion. Blade was the exception, not the rule, and King was no Blade. Couldn't even come fucking close.
And that was before he even considered all of the other issues, issues that didn't seem to have occurred to Whistler.
"How long?" he asked. Whistler turned her head and gave him a confused look, like she'd missed the memo or, more likely, several of them. "What kind of resource commitment are we looking at here?"
Whistler was still looking at him, which meant he could pinpoint the exact point where her mood changed from confused to absolutely fucking furious. Even as exhausted as she was, as weighed down with worry for King, Whistler's anger was an intimidating sight.
Or would have been if Sullivan wasn't used to bucking the chain of command when called for.
"Commitment?" she asked, her voice low and threatening. Her eyes had darkened in fury, the pupils wide and black as she shifted from concerned girlfriend to take-no-prisoners, ass-kicking Valkyrie. It was a fairly impressive sight, even if he was pretty sure he could take her. She'd had, what? Six or seven hours sleep in the last three days? If she'd been well rested, he wouldn't have liked his chances, but he couldn't let a death threat or two stop him. Even as punch-drunk as she was, as hard as it was going to hit, she needed another reality check and it didn't seem like Caulder was willing to give it to her.
Which meant it was up to him.
"Have you been listening to the chatter?" he asked brusquely, knowing there was no point in pulling his punches. "At least three cells have fallen off the grid since you and King ran into your little problem. Word is Daystar is only working seven out of ten these days, and the success rate is dropping day by day."
She didn't believe him or didn't want to believe him, which amounted to pretty much the same thing. She glanced at Caulder, either looking for some support from him or some confirmation that what Sullivan had said was true.
Sullivan didn't take it personally. Much.
She still wasn't convinced when she turned back, either that or she didn't care whether or not he was telling her the truth, because the first words out of her mouth were, "What does that have to do with King?"
Which only went to show how fucked up her priorities were. He leaned in, getting in her space in a way he probably wouldn't have done once, back when Henderson and Carruthers were still alive and Whistler wasn't losing the fucking plot. "We're losing people hand over fist, Whistler. I know it's hard. I don't want to lose King either." So maybe that was a lie. Like he gave two shits about King when it came down to it. "But we're fighting for our lives and for everyone else's lives. Sacrifices have to be made."
She didn't bother to hide her contempt and, yeah, that last part had sounded pretentious as hell. But what the hell did she expect? Their cell was down to three - he didn't count Caulder's wife, Marta, and he sure as hell wasn't going to count King. With Daystar failing, they were going to have to go back to old-fashioned ass-kicking, which meant there was going to be no one to babysit King even if he hadn't been a threat all on his own.
"Sacrifices?" The contempt was clear in her voice, too. "What the fuck do you know about sacrifice?"
He held her gaze steadily, finally letting some of his own anger leak into his voice. Some of it - the rest he kept locked down tight. "Vampires killed my wife, Whistler. Vampires like King." She flushed an ugly shade of red, but she didn't back down and he didn't let her off the hook. Not yet, and maybe not ever, raising his voice in the hope that that would finally get through to her. "Sooner or later, the thirst always wins. You know that, Whistler. You know that."
Her eyes dropped, long enough that he thought he'd finally got through to her. He should have known better. He should have remembered that when she was losing, when she was outmatched and outgunned, she fought dirty.
She fought to win.
"What if they hadn't killed her, Sullivan? What if they'd turned her instead? Would you still be arguing about 'resources' then?"
The anger flared within him, burning hot and bright. He no longer cared that he had half a foot on her, or that they were technically on the same side, or that she was perfectly capable of breaking every bone in his body if she had enough motivation. He loomed over her, his nostrils flaring and the look in his eyes hard and uncompromising.
"Don't you fucking dare compare King and my wife," he said quietly, the full weight of his fury showing in every clearly enunciated word. But he should have known better than to think she'd back down just because he was beyond pissed and unable to hide it.
"I'm not," she said and it would have been better if her voice had been full of the same kind of uncompromising iciness that his had been, instead of being resigned and exhausted. It would have been better if her next words hadn't been: "I'm comparing how you felt about her to how I feel about King."
The words took the wind out of his sails and left him feeling like a fucking heel, and she just kept twisting the knife, her voice rising with every word as her anger built back up again.
"So don't you dare tell me that it's a question of resources, that you've done the math and it just doesn't add up. If it wasn't for King, you wouldn't have made it this far." She took a step back, her look encompassing not only Sullivan, but Caulder as well. "None of the Nightstalkers would have made it this far because there wouldn't be a Nightstalkers and there wouldn't be a cure if it hadn't been for King volunteering to be a guinea pig the first time around."
She swung back to Sullivan, her body taut in a way that had him bracing himself for the next blow. "That's how much he wanted to be free of the virus. He'd rather have died than stayed with Danica. He wanted me to fucking shoot him, for Christ's sake. He didn't give up then and we're not giving up now. We don't leave our people behind, remember? Not if we can help it. Not if we can save them. It's too late for Carruthers and Henderson, and you weren't the one who had to sit there, helpless, while you watched them die.
"It's not too late for King, and I'll be damned if we give up on him."
She waited, staring him down until she was satisfied that she'd got through to him, or satisfied that he knew he wasn't going to get through to her. And then she turned to Caulder, dismissing Sullivan with a last hard and unforgiving glance as she said, "You do what you have to. If that means you have to give him a transfusion, you do that." She shot another pointed look at Sullivan. "No matter what the resource implications are."
Caulder nodded, avoiding Sullivan's eyes. Only then did Whistler turn on her heel, stalking back towards where King was sleeping.
"Well," said Caulder slowly. "That could have gone better."
Master of the fucking understatement. Sullivan let out the breath he was holding, feeling raw, like he'd gone ten rounds with Blade and come out, unsurprisingly, on the losing side.
"Do you really think you can cure him?" he asked. "Or are you just blowing smoke up Whistler's ass?"
Caulder didn't take offence at the crudity - he never did. Instead, he hummed to himself thoughtfully, his fingers scratching in his beard.
And then he shrugged. "If Daystar is failing, it's because the virus is mutating or because not all original strains are susceptible to it. Either way, King is infected with the resistant strain and this may be my best chance to determine why it is resistant."
"So he's your guinea pig this time as well?" Man, that was cold, even by Sullivan's own standards. He'd never figured Caulder for the mad scientist type, although from what he'd heard about Somerfield, finding out the same about her wouldn't have surprised him.
Caulder shrugged again. "I prefer to think of him as my patient, and I will, of course, do the best I can for him. And if, in the process, I can engineer the removal of some vampires from this earth..."
Sullivan gave him a tight little smile, one that held no amusement. "You're a visionary, my friend."
Caulder pulled an 'eh' face. "I prefer to think of myself as an optimist."
Sullivan wasn't going to argue with that.
-o-
No matter what Sullivan may have thought, the fact that they were losing cells did bother Abby. What bothered her more was that she hadn't known about it, had taken her eye so far off the ball, had been so focused on King, that she'd missed it.
She commandeered one of the working laptops and pored over the few, fragmented reports that had reached what was left of their cell. There wasn't much to go on - Nightstalkers weren't much for sharing even when things were going well, too concerned that the vampires would get wise to their arrangements and track back from one cell to another. What you didn't know couldn't be tortured out of you.
But there were still ways and means of pooling information where they could, most of which Hedges had come up with. Locked forums and chat rooms, masked IPs and proxy servers. Things she didn't understand and seldom used - she'd left that to Hedges, but Hedges wasn't around to pick up the slack.
And Abby had definitely been slacking.
It made grim reading. Sullivan had been right - at least three cells had gone completely silent, and while Abby would like to think that they'd just gone to ground, erring on the side of caution, the pessimist in her knew better. They hadn't fallen off the grid - they'd been forcibly and violently removed, one cell at a time.
Carruthers and Henderson could attest to that.
But even the cells that hadn't gone silent didn't have good news. There were repeated, coded reports of the 'payload' failing to deliver, of 'excess asset depreciation' or 'loss of customer retention'.
All of which told Abby that Daystar wasn't working and people were dying because of it.
The only upside was the fact that the vampire herd seemed to have been thinned considerably by Daystar before Sommerfield's antivirus had finally burned itself out. The downside was that the remaining vampires seemed not only immune but pissed as hell and looking for payback.
She needed to start doing her job, spending less time by King's bedside or, if she sat with King, spending as much time trawling through intelligence as she did watching him sleep the sleep of the infected and restless. Her focus now had to be on doing what she was supposed to have been doing all along - hunting vamps. Even when Hedges had been around, with his state-of-the-art ability to intercept communications and follow the money, she'd always relied on the old-fashioned way of tracking - mapping clusters of unexpected deaths and police homicide reports, or keeping an eye on CDC chatter for any unexpected or unexplained disease spikes. Now it seemed as though they were going to have to rely on the old-fashioned way of killing vamps, as well.
It wasn't going to take as much of a readjustment to her worldview as Sullivan might have expected, given his apparently low opinion of her. Yeah, she may have relied on Daystar a little too much to make their jobs easier, but she wasn't the only one and she was still more than capable of kicking ass. One of these days he might find that out up close and personal.
She was adaptable - she'd had to be. All of them it had to be and she'd long since learned to roll with the punches.
The problem was that the punches just kept on coming.
-o-
King was sleeping again. He slept a lot and all Zoë wanted was for him to wake up. She was so bored, especially because Abby was so busy these days and didn't seem to have the time to spend with her, not since King got sick. And even when she did have the time, Abby always looked sad. Zoë didn't think it was just because Abby missed her mom.
Zoë missed her mom. She tried not to, she really did, because she wanted to be a good girl. Abby was kind and King was funny, and they'd promised to take care of her, but they weren't her mom. Nothing could replace her mom, especially not when Abby was too busy and Caulder was too big and scary to talk to.
That left King, and King was sick. He slept a lot and Zoë wasn't supposed to disturb him when he was sleeping. Or when he was awake. Abby said he got tired because he was sick, and that he'd be well again soon, but he didn't seem to be getting any better. Maybe that was why Abby looked sad all of the time, because she was worried about King. And that meant that Zoë worried about him, too.
She knew that she wasn't supposed to sneak into the infirmary, but she'd wanted to see King, have him tell her silly stories until she felt better. She also wanted to make sure that he hadn't changed his mind about helping Abby look after her, but when she made her way past Caulder, who was looking down the same kind of microscope that her mom had had and didn't see her, King was asleep again and Abby wasn't there.
She sighed, kicking her feet disconsolately as she settled into the chair by King's bed and pulled Mr Gigglesworth into her lap. King had come up with the name for her new stuffed bunny, bought to replace all of the toys that she'd had to leave behind in the Honeycomb Hideout. She wasn't sure that it suited him, but King's eyes had crinkled up at the corners when he said it and she'd liked the way that it had sounded in King's mouth - like he was laughing a little as he said it and that made her want to laugh a little as well - so Mr Gigglesworth it was.
He didn't talk much, though. Not like King talked and whenever Sullivan caught her talking to the toy, he'd watch her with a small frown like she was just a baby and no use for anything. When he looked at her like that, all of her words dried up and she wanted to cry, just like the baby she really wasn't, no matter what Sullivan thought.
She guessed that Sullivan was okay, really, but she wasn't sure she liked him, not like she liked King. She didn't know him well enough and King didn't talk about her as if she was a nuisance baby. She didn't even mind if he called her half-pint or runt. He called everyone stupid names, except for Abby. Or he had. Back before her mom had died.
Zoë sighed again, switching her attention from her bunny's empty plastic eyes to King.
King's eyes were open, watching her even if they looked kind of empty like her toy's, and she perked up, excited to have someone to talk to who wouldn't think she was a pest.
"Hey," he said, and his voice sounded croaky, like Zoë's did when she had a cold or her throat was sore. She smiled at him but King didn't smile back, not at first. He just blinked at her a little, like he was still mostly asleep.
His eyes were a little weird, not like they normally were. They were light, as if all of the colour had washed away from them. Just like the Nome King's eyes had been before Abby and King (and Blade) had killed him. Just like Blade's were all of the time.
"Is your throat sore?" she asked him sympathetically, wondering if that was why he sounded so rough. "Are you thirsty?"
His face twisted up, like he had to think about it. "A little," he said, and his eyes seemed really bright now. Zoë stared at them, fascinated, before remembering how her mom used to say that staring wasn't nice, although she never figured out how her mom knew when she was staring when her mom couldn't see her doing it. Her mom used to tell her it was magic, like the Wizard of Oz.
"I'll get you a glass of milk," she said, jumping up before King could tell her off for staring, too. She didn't think he would but better - as her mom had said - safe than sorry.
She was a big girl now, and she knew how to fetch the stool so that she could reach the plastic glasses, and how to open the refrigerator door so that it didn't hit her or swing closed before she could get the jug out of the rack in the door. She poured it carefully, not spilling a drop, and then put everything back in its place before heading to the infirmary and King, both hands wrapped around the glass and walking slowly so that it didn't spill.
When she handed it to him, he gulped it down greedily, little droplets of milk escaping to run down his chin and land on his t-shirt, where they left dark little splotches.
"You'll get a tummy ache if you drink it that fast," she warned him disapprovingly, and he huffed out a little laugh as he put the glass shakily down onto his bedside table, turning his head to look at her again.
She beamed back at him, happy that he was awake and company, before she remembered her manners. "Would you like some more?" she asked politely, and he laughed again, a little breathlessly, although she didn't know what she'd said that was funny.
"Yes, please, sweetheart," he said, and she smiled at him again, bouncing back into the kitchen because this time the glass was empty and she didn't have to worry about dripping milk everywhere - he'd drained it dry.
She left the stool where it was this time. King might want more and it was too heavy to keep moving about by herself. But she still didn't make a mess and she was just as careful carrying the full glass back, settling herself on the chair beside his bed to watch him as he gulped the cool milk down again. He seemed really thirsty. She would have asked him if he wanted some more but this time he kept hold of the glass when he'd finished, wiping the back of his hand shakily across his mouth.
She stared at him for a minute, looking away from his eyes to the needle in his arm. It made her feel a little bit dizzy, watching the blood drip down into the tube, like her head was a balloon and it was just going to float away, but she couldn't be squeamish if she was going to be a doctor like her mom.
"Does it hurt?" she asked politely, looking back at King because it was better than looking at the blood. He stared back at her blankly and she had to point to the drip and the big, red bag hanging above him.
He thought about it for a moment, watching the bag, and maybe the sight made him feel a little bit sick as well, because he was even paler when he turned back to face her.
"It itches a bit," he said. Zoë couldn't see why blood would itch but King would know better than she did.
He was being very brave, braver than Zoë thought she could be if someone stuck a needle in her arm.
"Are you going to stay awake now?" she asked when he stayed silent, and he smiled back at her, soft and faint.
"I guess so."
"Are you feeling better?"
He hesitated for a moment, before nodding. His eyes were still bright and not like King's at all, but she'd missed talking to him. "A little bit," he said. "Why, d'you want some company?"
She nodded enthusiastically, and his laugh this time was more like King's used to be.
"Want me to read you a story?"
That got an even more enthusiastic nod. King wasn't the one who usually read her stories - her mom had done that, and then Abby once her mom had died. But Zoë would never pass up a story about Oz, even if it was something that had just been between her mom and her once.
She guessed that Abby and King were her new family now, and it was bad not to share.
"Okay," he said, and he wasn't smiling now. He looked tired, his eyes too pale and his face all washed out. Maybe he was still feeling sick, and she felt a little guilty at bothering him when Abby had told her not to. But King didn't seem to mind, and maybe it was just that all of that milk really had given him a stomach ache. And anyway, he'd offered to read her a story, and she'd missed stories so much since Abby got so busy. "Go fetch your book and then you can come and sit right down here." He patted the bed beside him. "So we can both see the pictures, okay?"
She didn't pick an Oz book. Not when King's eyes were shining like that, reminding her too much the Nome King's eyes and how they had looked just the same. She picked Alice in Wonderland instead, because it was almost as good as an Oz book and it was just as silly as King.
Caulder didn't spot her when she made her way back to the infirmary this time either. Being small was good in some ways if it meant she could sneak into places without being seen. King was still awake and she gave him another smile, getting a tired, distracted one back, before she clambered up onto the bed next to him, settling herself in the crook of his arm.
He was very warm, even if the arm he put around her wasn't as soft as her mom's. She propped the book up on her knees and started turning the pages, listening as King started to read the words softly, stumbling over them like he was really tired and couldn't concentrate. She didn't mind that much - she knew the story well enough to fill in most of the gaps even when he got distracted, or he missed words or sentences.
It was still a good story and it was good to have someone read it to her.
-o-
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